


forever just means forever

by nereid



Category: The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-01
Updated: 2019-09-01
Packaged: 2020-10-04 11:16:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20470136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nereid/pseuds/nereid
Summary: prompt - I'll be the corpse in their home





	forever just means forever

**Author's Note:**

  * For [scorpiod](https://archiveofourown.org/users/scorpiod/gifts), [ElasticElla](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElasticElla/gifts).

There is a corpse, or more than one corpse, maybe one or two or three. A corpse, like everything, is a mere matter or perception, no more no less. This is not an insult, it just is. All the corpses are beautiful and two of the courses look the same, except perhaps if one believes in souls, and if one notices the different miniscule physical differences, clothes and hairstyles and such. Minor differences, except of course, the soul stuff. The matter of any of these corpses having souls is of course, up for debate, no more or less than for any other creature, living or not. Perhaps less - there is the whole vampire thing to consider. Humans have souls, and that might be their burden to carry, but it does not have to be a vampire burden. Perhaps. The jury, in this particular case meaning, these three - might still be out on this one.

Just last week, when Katherine is watching Castlevania, and she sees Alucard and his long, silk hair and how he is of stone, and Sypha and her short, curly hair and how she is of the earth, and Trevor and his wild, brown hair and how he is of the people, she thinks Oh. Oh.

Just last week, when Stefan is watching the Hour, and Marnie is so beautiful and sharp, and she says to Hector, who is so handsome and smug, Marnie spits out, "Two beautiful, intelligent women, wasted on you", Stefan is watching this and he thinks Oh, no.

Just last week, or perhaps years ago, Elena is reading Sylvia Plath, and Slyvia Plath is honest and she stigns sometimes, and she says to Elena, 

"Dying

Is an art, like everything else. 

I do it exceptionally well."

Sylvia says this to Elena, and Elena thinks Oh, yes.

Again, or perhaps - still:

All of them are sprawled luxuriously just smack-dab in the center of the living room. None of them are moving, or at least not in any significant way. A corpse means dead, and well, in this case this is not a lie. They are alive also, yes, in the sense that they can talk and fuck and dance. They used to do all these things, together even. It is an alive thing, to be talking, dancing and fucking, a brilliant, magical, alive thing, not to be underestimated, though not to be overestimated either. Alive means alive, it does not necessarily mean much less. Vampires being vampires, and for them to be considered alive it means giving up on some presuppositions on being alive. This does not require professional knowledge, merely experience. Stefan and Elena did go to medical school, once or twice or more, so they have done the required reading as well. They know there's no hearts beating inbetween their ribs. Katherine has not done the required reading, not even close, but she has pressed her nails into Elena's waist while Stefan presses into her, so she knows from experience. Knowing from experience is different than knowing from a book, and Katherine does not trust knowledge she has not felt on her skin, or on her lips. Tangible, tactile. This is how she keeps alive, and she does not care for knowledge that she cannot feel. Knowledge like that can fool her, has fooled her. Trusting Stefan's words would have gotten her nowhere at points. Trusting his outstretched hand has meant a lot. But, yes. Corpses, and alive ones at that. Makes one wonder.

Let us, then, keep this simile. 

A corpse, or two or three corpses. It's numbers that matter.

Katherine, valuing her practical, tangible knowledge, is always the one who decides they need to move. She cannot necessarily explain all this knowledge, but she does not necessarily value explanations. What matters is this: inevitably, their presence somewhere starts to waste them away. They've ruined a smaller town or two in their beginnings. She was more careless then, so vibrant and larger than death, because not being on the run does that to an ancient Doppelganger vampire who has outsmarted everyone who wanted her even deader than she already was. She forgot, in their beginnings, that she is not on the run in the same way now. She was so used to having only her own demons, she forgot to take into account that Stefan and Elena had theirs. She has before, and she still gives herself credit for this, out loud and in the open, with a roll of the eye and a tossing of the hair, and a faux-careless demeanor that's hard to shake off. The demons are also hard to shake off, especially when they do not belong to her, when she cannot deal with them with a flash of a smile and a train ticket to take her away. Elena's demons and Stefan's demons come in different flavors. She notices, at some point, that the demons are similar, to an extent. It always breaks both of them when they accidentally kill a blonde, curly girl. Katherine knows in her skin that there is a reason for this, she turned Caroline herself, many summers ago. This knowledge does not help, it is not the right kind of knowledge. 

She could murder the curly blonds before Elena and Stefan ever get to them, but it's not her way, it's petty and cheap and she does not want it. This is, perhaps, not a good choice, but it's the one she makes. Somewhere, somehow, she thinks that both Elena and Stefan appreciate it. Stefan always fucks them differently when they get into a new town. She has not asked him about it, because she has this knowledge already, built into her dead bloodstream. What better way to attempt becoming a real boy, take 27364, than going from preferring classic missionary to light bondage. It's all tragically comedic, this eternity of three of them going somewhere only to end up nowhere, which is where they want to be. It would be so much easier, to never stop, but Elena could not take that. Elena likes local festivities and finding new bars and drinking the patrons underneath their tables. Corpses can get drunk, but it takes more, and when they move, Elena always circulates the bars first. Usually, she steals one of Katherine's dresses, if there is, after all this time, such a thing as separate possessions between them. They all have Stefan's ripper in them, and Elena's relationship with death, and Katherine's drive for everything with "new" written on it. Especially if it sparkles.

One might see, then, how it might be difficult to count these corpses as anything. It's an amalgam, it's three dead people attempting symbioticism. It's annoying, and it's always a thrill, and always a bit of both at the same time. Parts of it are better, like the first few hours after Stefan gets high on draining someone's life out of them. He is less of his usual self then, and more of something else, something sharper and more vibrant, when he kisses Katherine with a blonde still on his tongue, and lifts Elena onto his hips like precious stolen cargo. Curiously, he always touches Katherine like she is more breakable of the two of them, and she always means to ask him why, but never does. Being corpses and living together is one thing, asking someone for answers is another, and might interfere with the first part, and she wants to keep the first part, wants to have Elena and have Stefan, wants to spoil them and unravel their threads and sometimes both cannot happen at the same time.

There is blood on the hardwood floor that no one has cleaned in days. Mostly when this happens, it is Elena. Stefan mostly plays outside, because he does not like to play with food in the way that Elena and Katherine do. He will join them, if they have brought along some sweet-smelling boy or girl, but his victims never cross their threshold. Perhaps it is shame? Katherine does not ask and Stefan does not offer more than what is contained in the hunger in his eyes when he licks off the last of the blood, and the hunger that remains after.

Corpses can be lovers, and these three are, but this does not make it more than it is. There is love here, Katherine knows. There is love when Elena takes them dancing, and there is love when Stefan talks to them about his writing even if he does not show it, and there is love in Katherine too when she keeps them all together, always.

Til death do us part does not work on corpses. Forever just means forever, and happily ever afters require endings, those unattainable luxuries of humanity.

Katherine still watches tv, even when it is three people easy to recognize her own life in.

Stefan watches tv, even when all it makes him think about is how he ruins everyone.

Elena still reads poems about death and devises sembleances of meaning from them.

If this is dying, Katherine thinks, a grin on her face and her fellow corpses inside her and above her and around her, all of them somewhere and going nowhere, then they all are doing it exceptionally well.


End file.
